Vscode-cpptools: C++ intelliSense: discover include paths in the project directory

[nholthaus]

It's kind of annoying to have to include project subdirectory paths into the c_cpp_properties.json file as include directories, when they've already been indexed and can be opened with ctrl+p. Can't subdirectories of the current open directory automatically be included as include paths if they contain at least one .h/.hpp file?

It would also be nice if you could optionally include subdirectories of an existing include path. It would come in handy for frameworks like Boost or Qt.

[bobbrow]

Thank you for the feedback. We agree that manually setting up the includePath is not a good user experience and have been discussing options to make this better for everyone.

[BillDenton]

One useful addition would be to allow wild cards and paths relative to the loaded file.
e.g
**/include
../include

[saivert]

how about using pkg-config to discover include paths? Just let us pick the package name as dependency. manually running pkg-config and copy pasting include paths into c_cpp_properties.json is tedious. I have written a script which automates this:

pkg-config --cflags-only-I gtkmm-3.0 | sed 's/-I\([^ ]*\)/"\1",\n/g'

[bobbrow]

We recently added a light bulb code action for unresolved #include files, so you should be able to click your way through most of the include path setup. In a future update we will also add an option to automatically accept all light bulb include path suggestions if they are unambiguous. Another option is to use compile_commands.json so you don't have to mess with the include path or defines. Do either of these options help?

[jwatt]

Yes, the compile_commands.json option in particular.

[BillDenton]

Does anyone know how to get scons to generate compile_commands.json?

[mcepl]

Another option is to use compile_commands.json so you don't have to mess with the include path or defines.

That is interesting, but really parsing generated C-compiler command line (e.g., generated by pkg-config) would be the best.

[bobbrow]

This issue is addressed by the recursive includes feature. Adding ${workspaceFolder}/** to your includePath will auto-add the necessary paths to match your #include lines. You can also use the ** syntax for folders outside the workspace if you are using some other library (like QT) that has a lot of folders that need to be included: /path/to/library/**